BUT folks say Mævius is no ass;
But Mævius makes it clear
That he's a monster of an ass-
An ass without an ear!

THERE comes from old Avaro's grave
A deadly stench-why, sure, they have
Immured his soul within his Grave!

LAST Monday all the papers said,
That Mr.
was dead;

Why, then, what said the city?

The tenth part sadly shook their head,
And shaking sigh'd, and sighing said,
"Pity, indeed, 'tis pity!"

But when the said report was found
A rumor wholly without ground,
Why, then, what said the city?
The other nine parts shook their head,
Repeating what the tenth had said,
"Pity, indeed, 't is pity!"

YOUR poem must eternal be,
Dear Sir!-it cannot fail-
For 't is incomprehensible,
And wants both head and tail.

SWANS sing before they die-'t were no bad thing
Did certain persons die before they sing.

the "Fortunate Isles" of the Muses: and then other and more
momentous interests prompted a different voyage, to firmer an
chorage and a securer port. I have in vain tried to recover the
lines from the Palimpsest tablet of my memory: and I can only
offer the introductory stanza, which had been committed to
writing for the purpose of procuring a friend's judgment on
the metre, as a specimen.

Encinctured with a twine of leaves,
That leafy twine his only dress!
A lovely Boy was plucking fruits,
By moonlight, in a wilderness.

The moon was bright, the air was free,
And fruits and flowers together grew
On many a shrub and many a tree:
And all put on a gentle hue,
Hanging in the shadowy air
Like a picture rich and rare.

It was a climate where, they say,
The night is more beloved than day.
But who that beauteous Boy beguiled,
That beauteous Boy, to linger here?
Alone, by night, a little child,

In place so silent and so wild-

Has he no friend, no loving Mother near?

I have here given the birth, parentage, and premature decease of the "Wanderings of Cain, a poem,"-entreating, however, my Readers not to think so meanly of my judgment, as to suppose that I either regard or offer it as any excuse for the publication of the following fragment (and I may add, of one or two others in its neighborhood), or its primitive crudity. But I should find still greater difficulty in forgiving myself, were I to record pro tædio publico a set of petty mishaps and annoy ances which I myself wish to forget. I must be content therefore with assuring the friendly Reader, that the less he attributes its appearance to the Author's will, choice, or judgment, the nearer to the truth he will be. S. T. C.

THE WANDERINGS OF CAIN.

PREFATORY NOTE.

CANTO II.

"A LITTLE further, O my father, yet a little further, and we shall come into the open moonlight." Their road was through a forest of fir-trees; at its entrance the trees stood at distances from each other, and the A prose composition, one not in metre at least, seems prima facie to require explanation or apology. It was written in the path was broad, and the moonlight, and the moonlight year 1798, near Nether Stowey in Somersetshire, at which place shadows reposed upon it, and appeared quietly to in(sanctum et amabile nomen! rich by so many associations and habit that solitude. But soon the path winded and recollections) the Author had taken up his residence in order became narrow; the sun at high noon sometimes to enjoy the society and close neighborhood of a dear and hon-speckled, but never illumined it, and now it was

work was to consist, and which, the reader is to be informed,

dark as a cavern.

"It is dark, O my father!" said Enos; "but the path under our feet is smooth and soft, and we shall soon come out into the open moonlight."

ored friend, T. Poole. Esq. The work was to have been written in concert with another, whose name is too venerable within the precincts of genius to be unnecessarily brought into connexion with such a trifle, and who was then residing at a small distance from Nether Stowey. The title and subject were sug gested by myself, who likewise drew out the scheme and the "Lead on, my child!" said Cain: "guide me. contents for each of the three books or cantoes, of which the little child!" And the innocent little child clasped a *was to have been finished in one night! My partner undertook finger of the hand which had murdered the righteous the first canto: I the second: and whichever had done first, was Abel, and he guided his father. The fir branches to set about the third. Almost thirty years have passed by; yet drip upon thee, my son." "Yea, pleasantly, father at this moment I cannot without something more than a smile for I ran fast and eagerly to bring thee the pitcher moot the question which of the two things was the more im- and the cake, and my body is not yet cool. How practicable, for a mind so eminently original to compose another man's thoughts and fancies, or for a taste so austerely pure and happy the squirrels are that feed on these fir-trees! simple to imitate the Death of Abel? Methinks I see his grand they leap from bough to bough, and the old squirre's and noble countenance as at the moment when having dispatch play round their young ones in the nest. I clomb a tree ed my own portion of the task at full finger-speed, I hastened yesterday at noon, O my father, that I might play ency fixed on his almost blank sheet of paper, and then its with them; but they leapt away from the branches, silent mock-piteous admission of failure struggling with the even to the slender twigs did they leap, and in a sense of the exceeding ridiculousness of the whole scheme-moment I beheld them on another tree. Why, O my which broke up in a laugh: and the Ancient Mariner was writ- father, would they not play with me? I would b good to them as thou art good to me: and I groaned Years afterward, however, the draft of the Plan and proposed Incidents, and the portion executed, obtained favor in the to them even as thou groanest when thou givest me eyes of more than one person, whose judgment on a poetic to eat, and when thou coverst me at evening, and as work could not but have weighed with me, even though no pa- often as I stand at thy knee and thine eyes look at rental partiality had been thrown into the same scale, as a me." Then Cain stopped, and stifling his groans he make-weight: and I determined on commencing anew, and

to him with my manuscript-that look of humorous despond

ten instead.

composing the whole in stanzas, and made some progress in sank to the earth, and the child Enos stood in the realizing this intention, when adverse gales drove my bark off

darkness beside him.

And Cain lifted up his voice and cried bitterly, and said, “The Mighty One that persecuteth me is on this side and on that; he pursueth my soul like the wind, like the sand-blast he passeth through me; he is around me even as the air! O that I might be utterly no more! I desire to die—yea, the things that never had life, neither move they upon the earth-behold! they seem precious to mine eyes. O that a man might live without the breath of his nostrils! So I might abide in darkness, and blackness, ger." and an empty space! Yea, I would lie down, I would Pallid, as the reflection of the sheeted lightning on not rise, neither would I stir my limbs till I became the heavy-sailing night-cloud, became the face of as the rock in the den of the lion, on which the Cain; but the child Enos took hold of the shaggy young lion resteth his head whilst he sleepeth. For skin, his father's robe, and raised his eyes to his the torrent that roareth far off hath a voice, and the father, and listening whispered, "Ere yet I could clouds in heaven look terribly on me; the Mighty speak, I am sure, O my father! that I heard that One who is against me speaketh in the wind of the voice. Have not I often said that I remembered a cedar grove; and in silence am I dried up." Then sweet voice? O my father! this is it:" and Cain Enos spake to his father: "Arise, my father, arise, trembled exceedingly. The voice was sweet indeed, we are but a little way from the place where I found but it was thin and querulous like that of a feeble the cake and the pitcher." And Cain said, "How slave in misery, who despairs altogether, yet cannot knowest thou?" and the child answered-" Behold, refrain himself from weeping and lamentation. And, the bare rocks are a few of thy strides distant from behold! Enos glided forward, and creeping softly the forest; and while even now thou wert lifting up round the base of the rock, stood before the stranger, thy voice, I heard the echo." Then the child took and looked up into his face. And the Shape shriekhold of his father, as if he would raise him: and ed, and turned round, and Cain beheld him, that his Cain being faint and feeble, rose slowly on his knees limbs and his face were those of his brother Abel and pressed himself against the trunk of a fir, and whom he had killed! And Cain stood like one who stood upright, and followed the child. struggles in his sleep because of the exceeding terribleness of a dream.

ed from its point, and between its point and the sands a tall man might stand upright. It was here that Enos had found the pitcher and cake, and to this place he led his father. But ere they had reached the rock they beheld a human shape: his back was towards them, and they were advancing unperceived, when they heard him smite his breast and cry aloud, "Woe is me! woe is me! I must never die again, and yet I am perishing with thirst and hun

The path was dark till within three strides' length of its termination, when it turned suddenly; the Thus as he stood in silence and darkness of soul, thick black trees formed a low arch, and the moon- the Shape fell at his feet, and embraced his knees, light appeared for a moment like a dazzling portal. and cried out with a bitter outcry, "Thou eldestEnos ran before and stood in the open air; and when born of Adam, whom Eve, my mother, brought forth, Cain, his father, emerged from the darkness, the cease to torment me! I was feeding my flocks in child was affrighted. For the mighty limbs of Cain green pastures by the side of quiet rivers, and thou were wasted as by fire; his hair was as the matted | killedst me; and now i am in misery." Then Cain curls on the Bison's forehead, and so glared his fierce closed his eyes, and hid them with his hands; and and sullen eye beneath: and the black abundant locks on either side, a rank and tangled mass, were stained and scorched, as though the grasp of a burning iron hand had striven to rend them; and his countenance told in a strange and terrible language of agonies that had been, and were, and were sull to continue to be.

again he opened his eyes, and looked around him, and said to Enos, "What beholdest thou? Didst thou hear a voice, my son ?" "Yes, my father, I beheld a man in unclean garments, and he uttered a sweet voice, full of lamentation." Then Cain raised up the Shape that was like Abel, and said :-" The Creator of our father, who had respect unto thee, The scene around was desolate; as far as the eye and unto thy offering, wherefore hath he forsaken could reach it was desolate: the bare rocks faced thee?" Then the Shape shrieked a second time, and each other, and left a long and wide interval of thin rent his garment, and his naked skin was like the white sand. You might wander on and look round white sands beneath their feet; and he shrieked yet and round, and peep into the crevices of the rocks, a third time, and threw himself on his face upon the and discover nothing that acknowledged the influ- sand that was black with the shadow of the rock, ence of the seasons. There was no spring, no sum- and Cain and Enos sate beside him; the child by his mer, no autumn: and the winter's snow, that would right hand, and Cain by his left. They were all have been lovely, fell not on these hot rocks and three under the rock, and within the shadow. The scorching sands. Never morning lark had poised Shape that was like Abel raised himself up, and himself over this desert; but the huge serpent often spake to the child: "I know where the cold waters hissed there beneath the talons of the vulture, and are, but I may not drink; wherefore didst thou then the vulture screamed, his wings imprisoned within take away my pitcher?" But Cain said, “Didst thou the coils of the serpent. The pointed and shattered not find favor in the sight of the Lord thy God?" summits of the ridges of the rocks made a rude The Shape answered, "The Lord is God of the mimiery of human concerns, and seemed to proph-living only, the dead have another God." Then esy mutely of things that then were not; steeples, the child Enos lifted up his eyes and prayed; but and battlemen's, and ships with naked masts. As far Cain rejoiced secretly in his heart. “ Wretched shall from the wood as a boy might sling a pebble of the they be all the days of their mortal life," exclaimed brook, there was one rock by itself at a small dis- the Shape, "who sacrifice worthy and acceptable tance from the main ridge. It had been precipitated sacrifices to the God of the dead; but after death there perhaps by the groan which the Earth uttered their toil ceaseth. Woe is me, for I was well beloved when our first father fell. Before you approached, it by the God of the living, and cruel wert thou, O appeared to lie flat on the ground, but its base slant- my brother, who didst snatch me away from his

power and his dominion." Having uttered these now unfelt, but never forgotten. It was at once the words, he rose suddenly, and fled over the sands; melancholy of hope and of resignation.

and Cain said in his heart, "The curse of the Lord We had not long been fellow-travellers, ere a sud. is on me; but who is the God of the dead?" and he den tempest of wind and rain forced us to seek proran after the Shape, and the Shape fled shrieking tection in the vaulted door-way of a lone chapelry: over the sands, and the sands rose like white mists and we sate face to face each on the stone bench behind the steps of Cain, but the feet of him that along-side the low, weather-stained wall, and as close was like Abel disturbed not the sands. He greatly as possible to the massy door. outran Cain, and turning short, he wheeled round, After a pause of silence: Even thus, said he, like and came again to the rock where they had been two strangers that have fled to the same shelter from sitting, and where Enos still stood; and the child the same storm, not seldom do Despair and Hope caught hold of his garment as he passed by, and he meet for the first time in the porch of Death! All fell upon the ground. And Cain stopped, and be- extremes meet, I answered; but yours was a strange holding him not, said, "he has passed into the dark and visionary thought. The better then doth it be woods," and he walked slowly back to the rocks; seem both the place and me, he replied. From a and when he reached it the child told him that he Visionary wilt thou hear a Vision? Mark that vivid had caught hold of his garment as he passed by, and flash through this torrent of rain! Fire and water. that the man had fallen upon the ground: and Cain Even here thy adage holds true, and its truth is the once more sate beside him, and said, “ Abel, my bro- moral of my Vision. I entreated him to proceed. ther, I would lament for thee, but that the spirit Sloping his face towards the arch and yet averting within me is withered, and burnt up with extreme his eye from it, he seemed to seek and prepare his agony. Now, I pray thee, by thy flocks, and by thy pastures, and by the quiet rivers which thou lovedst, the that thou tell me all that thou knowest. Who is the God of the dead? where doth he make his dwelling? what sacrifices are acceptable unto him? for I have he gradually sunk away, alike from me and from his offered, but have not been received; I have prayed, own purpose, and amid the gloom of the storm, and and have not been heard; and how can I be afflicted in the duskiness of that place, he sate like an emmore than I already am?" The Shape arose and answered, "O that thou hadst had pity on me as I will have pity on thee. Follow me, Son of Adam! and bring thy child with thee!"

words: till listening to the wind that echoed within
hollow edifice, and to the rain without,

Which stole on his thoughts with its two-fold sound,
The clash hard by and the murmur all round,

blem on a rich man's sepulchre, or like a mourner on the sodded grave of an only one-an aged mourner, who is watching the waned moon and sorroweth not. Starting at length from his brief trance of abstracAnd they three passed over the white sands be- tion, with courtesy and an atoning smile he renewed tween the rocks, silent as the shadows.

ALLEGORIC VISION.

his discourse, and commenced his parable.

During one of those short furloughs from the service of the Body, which the Soul may sometimes obtain even in this, its militant state, I found myself in a vast plain, which I immediately knew to be the Valley of Life. It possessed an astonishing diversity of A FEELING of sadness, a peculiar melancholy, is soils: and here was a sunny spot, and there a dark wont to take possession of me alike in Spring and in one, forming just such a mixture of sunshine and Autumn. But in Spring it is the melancholy of shade, as we may have observed on the mountains' Hope in Autumn it is the melancholy of Resigna-side in an April day, when the thin broken clouds tion. As I was journeying on foot through the Apen- are scattered over heaven. Almost in the very ennine, I fell in with a pilgrim in whom the Spring and trance of the valley stood a large and gloomy pile, the Autumn and the Melancholy of both seemed to into which I seemed constrained to enter. Every have combined. In his discourse there were the part of the building was crowded with tawdry ornafreshness and the colors of April:

Qual ramicel a ramo,

Tal da pensier pensiero
In lui germogliava.

ments and fantastic deformity. On every window was portrayed, in glaring and inelegant colors, some horrible tale, or preternatural incident, so that not a ray of light could enter, untinged by the medium But as I gazed on his whole form and figure, I be- through which it passed. The body of the building thought me of the not unlovely decays, both of age was full of people, some of them dancing, in and and of the late season, in the stately elm, after the out, in unintelligible figures, with strange ceremonies clusters have been plucked from its entwining vines, and antic merriment, while others seemed convulsed and the vines are as bands of dried withies around with horror, or pining in mad melancholy. Interits trunk and branches. Even so there was a memo- mingled with these, I observed a number of men, ry on his smooth and ample forehead, which blended clothed in ceremonial robes, who appeared, now to with the dedication of his steady eyes, that still marshal the various groups and to direct their movelooked-I know not, whether upward, or far onward, ments, and now, with menacing countenances, to or rather to the line of meeting where the sky rests drag some reluctant victim to a vast idol, framed of upon the distance. But how may I express that iron bars intercrossed, which formed at the same dimness of abstraction which lay on the lustre of the time an immense cage, and the shape of a human pilgrim's eyes, like the flitting tarnish from the breath Colossus.

of a sigh on a silver mirror! and which accorded I stood for a while lost in wonder what these things with their slow and reluctant movement, whenever might mean; when lo! one of the directors came up he turned them to any object on the right hand or on to me, and with a stern and reproachful look bade the left? It seemed, methought, as if there lay upon me uncover my head, for that the place into which I the brightness a shadowy presence of disappointments had entered was the temple of the only true Reli

gion, in the holier recess of which the great Goddess assisted without contradicting our natural vision, and personally resided. Himself too he bade me reverence, enabled us to see far beyond the limits of the Valley as the consecrated minister of her rites. Awe-struck of Life: though our eye even thus assisted permitted by the name of Religion, I bowed before the priest, us only to behold a light and a glory, but what we and humbly and earnestly entreated him to conduct could not descry, save only that it was, and that it me into her presence. He assented. Offerings he took was most glorious. from me, with mystic sprinklings of water and with And now, with the rapid transition of a dream, I salt he purified, and with strange sufflations he ex- had overtaken and rejoined the more numerous party orcised me; and then led me through many a dark who had abruptly left us, indignant at the very name and winding alley, the dew-damps of which chilled of religion. They journeyed on, goading each other my flesh, and the hollow echoes under my feet, with remembrances of past oppressions, and never mingled, methought, with moanings, affrighted me. looking back, till in the eagerness to recede from the At length we entered a large hall, without window, Temple of Superstition, they had rounded the whole or spiracle, or lamp. The asylum and dormitory it circle of the valley. And lo! there faced us the seemed of perennial night-only that the walls were mouth of a vast cavern, at the base of a lofty and brought to the eye by a number of self-luminous almost perpendicular rock, the interior side of which, inscriptions in letters of a pale pulchral light, that unknown to them, and unsuspected, formed the exheld strange neutrality with the darkness, on the treme and backward wall of the Temple. An im verge of which it kept its rayless vigil. I could read patient crowd, we entered the vast and dusky cave, them, methought; but though each one of the words which was the only perforation of the precipice. taken separately I seemed to understand, yet when I At the mouth of the cave sate two figures; the first, took them in sentences, they were riddles and in- by her dress and gestures, I knew to be SENSUALITY; comprehensible. As I stood meditating on these hard the second form, from the fierceness of his demeanor, sayings, my guide thus addressed me-Read and be- and the brutal scornfulness of his looks, declared lieve these are mysteries!—At the extremity of the himself to be the monster BLASPHEMY. He uttered vast hall the Goddess was placed. Her features, blend- big words, and yet ever and anon I observed that he ed with darkness, rose out to my view, terrible, yet turned pale at his own courage. We entered. Some vacant. I prostrated myself before her, and then remained in the opening of the cave, with the one or retired with my guide, soul-withered, and wondering, the other of its guardians. The rest, and I among and dissatisfied. them, pressed on, till we reached an ample chamber, that seemed the centre of the rock. The climate of the place was unnaturally cold.

As I re-entered the body of the temple, I heard a deep buzz as of discontent. A few whose eyes were bright, and either piercing or steady, and whose In the furthest distance of the chamber sate an ample foreheads, with the weighty bar, ridge-like, old dim-eyed man, poring with a microscope over above the eyebrows, bespoke observation followed the Torso of a statue which had neither basis, nor by meditative thought; and a much larger number, feet, nor head; but on its breast was carved NATURE! who were enraged by the severity and insolence of To this he continually applied his glass, and seemed the priests in exacting their offerings, had collected enraptured with the various inequalities which it in one tumultuous group, and with a confused outcry of "this is the Temple of Superstition!" after much contumely, and turmoil, and cruel maltreatment on all sides, rushed out of the pile: and I, methought, joined them.

rendered visible on the seemingly polished surface of the marble.-Yet evermore was this delight and triumph followed by expressions of hatred, and vehement railings against a Being, who yet, he assured us, had no existence. This mystery suddenly recalled We speeded from the Temple with hasty steps, to me what I had read in the Holiest Recess of the and had now nearly gone round half the valley, temple of Superstition. The old man spoke in divers when we were addressed by a woman, tall beyond tongues, and continued to utter other and most strange the stature of mortals, and with a something more mysteries. Among the rest he talked much and vethan human in her countenance and mien, which yet hemently concerning an infinite series of causes and could by mortals be only felt, not conveyed by words effects, which he explained to be-a string of blind or intelligibly distinguished. Deep reflection, ani- men, the last of whom caught hold of the skirt mated by ardent feelings, was displayed in them: of the one before him, he of the next, and so on till and hope, without its uncertainty, and a something they were all out of sight: and that they all walked more than all these, which I understood not, but infallibly straight, without making one false step, which yet seemed to blend all these into a divine though all were alike blind. Methought I borrowed unity of expression. Her garments were white and courage from surprise, and asked him,-Who then is matronly, and of the simplest texture. We inquired at the head to guide them? He looked at me with her name. My name, she replied, is Religion. ineffable contempt, not unmixed with an angry susThe more numerous part of our company, affright-picion, and then replied, "No one. The string of ed by the very sound, and sore from recent impostures blind men went on for ever without any beginning. or sorceries, hurried onwards and examined no far- for although one blind man could not move without ther. A few of us, struck by the manifest opposition stumbling, yet infinite blindness supplied the want of of her form and manners to those of the living sight." I burst into laughter, which instantly turned to dl, whom we had so recently abjured, agreed to terror-for as he started forward in rage, I caught follow her, though with cautious circumspection. a glance of him from behind; and lo! I beheld a She led us to an eminence in the midst of the valley, monster biform and Janus-headed, in the hinder face from the top of which we could command the whole and shape of which I instantly recognized the dread plain, and observe the relation of the different parts countenance of SUPERSTITION-and in the terror I of each to the other, and of each to the whole, and awoke.

of all to each. She then gave us an optic glass which

231

Well then, I was saying that Love, truly such, is itself not the most common thing in the world: and mutual love still less so. But that enduring personal attachment, so beautifully delineated by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, in the well-known ballad, "John Anderson, my jo, John," in addition to a depth and constancy of character of bility and tenderness of nature; a constitutional comno every-day occurrence, supposes a peculiar sensimunicativeness and utterancy of heart and soul; a delight in the detail of sympathy, in the outward and visible signs of the sacrament within-to count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But above all, it supposes a soul which, even in the pride and summer-tide of life-even in the lustihood of health and strength, had felt oftenest and prized highest that which age cannot take away, and which in all our

From a man turned of fifty, Catherine, I imagine, lovings, is the Love; expects a less confident answer.

CATHERINE.

A more sincere one, perhaps.

FRIEND.

Even though he should have obtained the nickname of Improvisatore, by perpetrating charades and extempore verses at Christmas times?

Nay, but be serious.

ELIZA.

FRIEND.

Serious? Doubtless. A grave personage of my years giving a love-lecture to two young ladies, cannot well be otherwise. The difficulty, I suspect, would be for them to remain so. It will be asked whether I am not the " elderly gentleman" who sate "despairing beside a clear stream," with a willow for his wig-block.

ELIZA.

ELIZA.

There is something here (pointing to her heart) that seems to understand you, but wants the word that would make it understand itself.

-I mean that willing sense of the insufficingness of the self for itself, which predisposes a generous nature to see, in the total being of another, the supplement and completion of its own-that quiet perpetual seeking which the presence of the beloved object modulates, not suspends, where the heart mo mently finds, and, finding, again seeks on-lastly when "life's changeful orb has pass'd the full," a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus brought home and pressed, as it were, to the very bosom of hourly experience: it supposes, I say, a

Say another word, and we will call it downright heart-felt reverence for worth, not the less deep be affectation. cause divested of its solemnity by habit, by fainilia.